


Call

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ekokami, I blame Ghostbusters 2016 and everybody should go see it, I broke my heart so many times writing this you guys it was awesome, M/M, Spectrophilia, stealth Ekokami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 09:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7635649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I would like to engage your services to analyze my evidence, to determine if any of it is of mundane origin at all, Saguru wrote, and wished with all his heart that they'd find it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call

**Author's Note:**

> Saguru never got Kid's hair to analyze, so he never deduced who Kid is.

Hakuba Laboratories  
4-68-9 Ekoda-cho  
Tokyo, Japan  
  
August 1st, 2016  
  
Dr. Abigail Yates  
Conductors of Metaphysical Examination, a.k.a. "Ghostbusters"  
110 North Moore St.  
TriBeCa, New York City, NY 10112  
  
Dr. Yates,  
  
Congratulations on your recent successes in New York.  My name is Hakuba Saguru, a detective currently residing in Tokyo, Japan.  I am writing in regards to forensic evidence that I have been collecting from a particular type of crime scene in recent months.  
  
The facilities I use to analyze my samples, Hakuba Laboratories, are considered some of the best in Japan.  However, they have been unable to determine anything about the evidence that is not apparent to the casual observer: namely, that it is viscous and faintly green.  The same holds true for the facilities the police prefer, though I admit I have only resorted to them once for a second opinion.  As with all forensics labs, they are considerably overworked.  
  
I would like to engage your services to analyze my evidence, to determine if any of it is of mundane origin at all.  
  
I have enclosed a sample and billing address.  
  
Sincerely,  
Hakuba Saguru  
8-9-8 Ekoda-cho  
Tokyo, Japan  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
The results arrived on his birthday.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
_Click_.  
  
A circle of laserbeams blinked into existence around Kid, all of them faintly green and criss-crossed into a net that faded somewhere around his knees.  Kid stopped short, one toe still on the pressure plate, eyeing the beams suspiciously.  
  
Saguru stepped reluctantly out from the shadowy corner where he'd hidden.  "Kid."  
  
Kid turned to look at him, cape fluttering lightly to swirl about his shins.  "... Meitantei.  You've gotten creative, I see."  
  
"Just a bit."  Saguru stopped well within reach, closer than he'd ever been to Kid before without being distracted by, say, wrestling for a gas mask.  The line of lights lay between them.  "I sent out some evidence recently for analysis."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"You leave traces inside your discarded disguises," Saguru said carefully.  "A bit moreso when you're startled out of them.  Until a few weeks ago, I thought it might've been a unique adhesive."  He wished it was.  "You've done that stunning of a job of concealing your state, far better than could be expected even of the master of disguise.  There was barely enough ectoplasm to register a positive result, when most ghosts drip it by the handful."  Kid went painfully still.  "But you were at rest for over eight years.  What brought you back?"  
  
Kid didn't answer.  
  
But Saguru was right, he _had_ to be right, the ectoplasm and the eight-year hiatus... and how Kid had even noticed the trap and _stopped_ , instead of just plowing right through and damn the alarms.  Kid had no problem tripping alarms as he escaped, after all.  Kid had to be (heat prickled at Saguru's eyes) long dead.  
  
Saguru had no idea what his expression looked like, but after a long, long silence... Kid's shoulders sagged, just barely, and slowly his cape and feet began to shred into mist.  A blue-green, otherworldly glow seeped out from under lapels and hair, his uncovered eye a single bright beacon under the glassy shadow of the hat brim.  
  
He was beautiful.  
  
"Ah, Meitantei..." Kid breathed.  "So close, and yet so far."  
  
The glow of Kid's cheek felt a little bit like the buzz hovering around a staticky wool blanket, and a little bit like icy mist, and mostly like sticking his fingertips into a pile of very cold kittens.  He barely stopped himself from touching the specter's actual... flesh, if it could be called that anymore.  "Tell me," he murmured.  "What did I miss?"  
  
Kid's smile broke Saguru's heart just a little bit more.  "That's for you to figure out, Meitantei.  Unless," the smile took on a hint of sharp edge, "you're planning to hold me captive...?"  
  
Oh.  Right.  Saguru let his hand fall.  "It's a string of LEDs and just enough ectoplasm that you'd register it as a functional device.  It can't actually hold anything."  
  
"Then I will take my leave."  Kid pulled himself together, until once more something convincingly human stood before Saguru.  He tipped his hat brim, and with a quiet, polite, "Meitantei," Kid vanished in a puff of smoke.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
To: hsaguru@hakubalabs.net  
From: physquerin@ghostbusters.net  
Subject:  re: Question about timeline of ghosts returning  
  
Mr. Saguru -  
  
Ghosts appear either 1. immediately upon death, 2. when summoned, or 3. when a vortex is opened and, pardon the colloquialism, all hell breaks loose.  Technically, 3 is a subset of 2, but considering the scale the categories may as well be differentiated.  Since Tokyo hasn't made the news with a Level-3 manifestation event, that can be ruled out.  
  
We are very interested in your case and findings!  
  
Sincerely,  
  
Dr. Erin Gilbert  
Conductors of Metaphysical Examination  
110 North Moore St.  
TriBeCa, New York City, NY 10112  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
To: physquerin@ghostbusters.net  
From: hsaguru@hakubalabs.net  
Subject: Findings  
  
Dr. Gilbert and colleagues -  
  
I believe I am dealing with a benevolent Class Four entity, if I am understanding your website's classification system correctly.  Classes Three and Four seem to only be differentiated by one's ability to identify the ghost in life?  It seems a bit arbitrary a distinction.  If, for example, two independent witnesses were to find a ghost, and only one to recognize it from, say, family pictures and lore, one witness would claim it was a Class Three and the other would claim it as a Class Four, would they not?  
  
Signed,  
  
Hakuba, Saguru  
  
p.s. - My apologies for the confusion.  I am accustomed to putting my name in the Japanese order when in Tokyo.  My surname is Hakuba and given name is Saguru.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
A week into the autumn term, Saguru was reading on class break when something frigid poked him right in the back of the neck.  He jerked away, dropping his book (and losing his place) and nearly knocking his desk over, but managed to bite his curse back to a mere hiss.  
  
"Kuroba-kun.  Don't _do_ that, your hands are freezing."  
  
Kuroba just laughed, wiggling his fingers well away from Saguru's skin.  "Cold hands, warm heart," he said in thickly accented English.  "Right?  Anyway, what's up?  You've seemed kind of down lately."  
  
Oh god no.  He couldn't tell Kuroba his favorite celebrity was dead.  Deflect, deflect!  "What, not going to pop up some flowers and confetti to distract me?"  
  
"Nope.  Flowers go to girls and I'm not on clean-up duty today."  
  
... Huh.  Saguru did a quick mental tabulation, and yes, Kuroba did only do his messier pranks when he had clean-up duty after school.  
  
"But you're avoiding the question."  Kuroba's grin gentled.  "What's wrong?"  
  
One train of thought went straight into a long line of cursing.  The rest panicked, and -- losing the metaphor -- grabbed for whatever might come into reach to make a plausible excuse.  "... It's... the Thing in New York.  Back in July."  Something flickered in Kuroba's eyes.  As well it should; the paranormal was the last thing he could've possibly been expecting out of Saguru.  "I find myself having to redefine all the parameters of my thinking."  Yes, good, that was true enough, Kuroba didn't need to know it was almost entirely focused on one entity.  "It's.  Disconcerting."  
  
"Ooooh.  Yeah, I can see that.  So you're buying what went down in New York was real?"  
  
Saguru blinked.  "You don't?"  
  
Kuroba winked and gestured lightly, hand like a gun as he mocked capping Saguru.  "I am _really_ not the best person to be asking that."  
  
... Kuroba Toichi.  If Kuroba accepted ghosts existed... well.  His father hadn't come back.  
  
"My apologies."  
  
Kuroba eyed him searchingly, perhaps waiting to see if Saguru would continue, but even Saguru wasn't so socially inept as to bring up _that_ kind of deduction.  Not to someone who was trying to be kind.  
  
Whatever Kuroba was looking for, perhaps he'd found it.  His shoulders relaxed just enough for Saguru to notice they hadn't been before, and a deck of cards appeared in his hands like magic.  
  
"Care to play?"  
  
"I..."  Poker really wasn't his game, and he didn't know many others.  Certainly not Japanese ones.  But, "... yes.  That would be lovely.  Thank you."  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
To: hsaguru@hakubalabs.net  
From: physquerin@ghostbusters.net  
Subject: Benevolent Class 4?  
  
  
Mr. Hakuba -  
  
A benevolent Class Four is the rarest kind of ghost!  Most of them are of the "woman in white" or "walking widow" types that just happen to be in a location where their death was recorded.  Usually it's a haunted inn or mansion.  Finding one that's appearing at crime scenes which, presumably, aren't all in the same location... we really must sit down and discuss your case sometime!  
  
The distinction between Class Three and Four is arbitrary in exactly the way you deduced!  However, the methods of dealing with them are different, in that Class Threes are limited to generic one-size-fits-all ways that are terribly inefficient (one size never fits all. ever.), and Class Fours can be researched and targeted if you have the time.  This is, of course, for the common malevolent type that actually gets itself noticed.  We have very little information about benevolent Class Fours.  
  
Sincerely,  
  
Dr. Erin Gilbert  
Conductors of Metaphysical Examination  
110 North Moore St.  
TriBeCa, New York City, NY 10112  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
It took four more nights before the loop of fairy lights on Saguru's balcony lured a kaitou into it.  
  
"You called, Meitantei?"  
  
Not so much called as crossed his fingers and hoped Kid would happen to manifest in an area where he could see the symbol, recognize it as one, and risk getting close enough to identify it as an invitation instead of a trap actually meant to work this time.  The probability of all those occurring were... incalcuable, but exceedingly low.  
  
Kid did make a habit of doing the improbable.  
  
Saguru set aside his homework and smiled.  "I wondered if you perhaps wanted to do something other than a heist."  Not that he had many ideas what... casual acquaintances?... did together.  The Japanese staples of karaoke and the arcade weren't really feasible, and as for the English... hm.  "I have movies...?"  
  
Kid stared at him, his silence somehow completely skeptical.  
  
It really wasn't all Saguru wanted, but, "I promise I'm not going to pressure you for answers," he explained.  "Or even ask questions yet.  My research isn't finished."  
  
Though he did have a fairly good idea of when Kid had died.  It wasn't ten years ago at all.  
  
"I have Big Hero 6; I don't think it was released in Japan before you reappeared?"  Which probably wasn't of any interest to a man who'd been approaching middle age.  Hastily, Saguru added, "Or the third Hobbit, the cinematics are excellent even if the trilogy is quite inaccurate to the book--"  
  
"Big Hero 6 will do, Meitantei.  I accept."  
  
Saguru blinked in astonishment.  He... actually hadn't expected that to work.  Perhaps he'd lucked out on Kid's movie preferences?  
  
"Popcorn?"  
  
"Please."  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
No one who'd died in late 2014 had matched the physical criteria needed to be Kaitou Kid ten years prior, nor had any of them been in all the right countries at the right time to pull off the heists of Kid's living career.  
  
Saguru set his grandfather's computers looking for missing persons cases.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
_Necrophilia_  
_From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_  
_Not to be confused with Necrophila, a genus of beetles._  
  
_Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia, is a sexual attraction or sexual act involving corpses. The attraction is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The term was coined by the Belgian alienist Joseph Guislain, who first used it in a lecture in 1850. It derives from the Greek words νεκρός (nekros; "dead") and φιλία (philia; "love").[1]_  
  
_Rosman and Resnick (1989) reviewed information from 34 cases of necrophilia describing the individuals' motivations for their behaviors: these individuals reported the desire to possess a non-resisting and non-rejecting partner (68%), reunions with a romantic partner (21%), sexual attraction to corpses (15%), comfort or overcoming feelings of isolation (15%), or seeking self-esteem by expressing power over a homicide victim (12%)._  
  
Definitely not, Saguru thought.  
  
_Spectrophilia_  
_From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_  
  
_Spectrophilia is sexual attraction to ghosts or sexual arousal from images in mirrors, as well as the phenomenon of sexual encounters between ghosts and humans._  
  
_Spectrophilia as a fetish_  
_Spectrophilia is a fetish that is classified as the paraphilia in which one is attracted to ghosts or spirits. Spectrophiliacs fantasize about ghosts and often imagine scenarios involving sexual events between themselves or others and spirits._  
  
Maybe he should wait a few more weeks and see if the internet had figured out something more applicable, now that ghosts were a valid phenomenon.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
Poker remained one of Saguru's less practiced games, but Kid showed willing to play the same House rules Kuroba did at the occasional lunch, so he was getting better rather quickly.  
  
Case in point, "Royal flush," Saguru announced, laying down his latest hand.  
  
Kid, glowing and misty, made a face.  "Poo," he said, laying down a royal flush as well.  "In other games, spades beats diamonds.  You win."  
  
There was no pot on the table to take.  No, the ante was far more risky than that... and Kid had to have cheated.  The chances of two people getting royal flushes was astronomically low.  So to be declaring Saguru the winner by fiat, he must be testing Saguru again.    
  
Saguru took the cards and began to shuffle them for another round, discarding all his questions until he found the most innocuous one.  "Were you summoned?"  
  
Kid's one glowing eye pulsed, ever-present grin flickering warmly.  "No."  
  
Unfortunately, that answer told Saguru far more than he suspected Kid wanted him to know.  
  
Kid easily won the next hand.  
  
"Would you read RPF about yourself?"  
  
Saguru blinked.  "What?"  
  
"Would you read Real Person Fiction about yourself," Kid reiterated, a hint of laughter in his voice.  "It's a genre of fanfic.  Fans on the internet writing fiction about series, characters, and celebrities.  Pretty much invariably provides what the series et al lack... so happy fluffy stories for Game of Thrones, really twisted or political stuff for kids' shows -- Harry Potter has about a zillion evil Dumbledores out there -- _lots_ more girls and minorities, and enough explicit stuff to make a red-light district blink."  
  
"That seems..."  Not odd, exactly.  Stories were one of the unique features of humanity.  But to read fiction about himself...  "Disconcertingly personal."  
  
"Is that a 'no'?"  
  
"It's an 'unlikely', but I won't put a blanket 'no' on it."  Saguru picked up his cards, mentally arranged them -- pair of sevens, a heart, a diamond, and a jack -- and discarded the reds.  "Two please."  
  
Kid let him win with the jack high.  Odd... once could be explained as a test, and Saguru had passed that, hadn't he?  Unless Kid was fishing for the questions Saguru surely had...?  
  
No.  Maybe if Kid did it a third time, but not yet.  
  
"Why don't you want anyone to know you're a ghost?"  That should be safe enough.  "It's not as though you use spectral tricks in your thefts, and surely it's a great deal of effort to disguise."  
  
"It is," Kid agreed placidly.  "My mother, however, is both aware of my job and unaware of my demise.  I would rather keep it that way, lest she join me prematurely."  
  
Did she not live close enough to visit, then?  It would be unusual... perhaps she'd emigrated.  It would be nigh impossible to charge her as an accomplice if she didn't even live in the same country.  
  
Another few hands, another few wins for Kid, another few impertinent questions ("So what did happen that Hattori-kun blisters the air blue when your name gets dropped?"), and then Kid let him win again.  
  
All right then.  There was his hypothesis confirmed, so, in for a penny.  "You didn't die of natural causes."  
  
"Form of a question, Meitantei."  
  
That wasn't a 'back off'.  In for a pound, then.  Saguru folded his hands under his chin and leaned forward.  "How did you die?"  
  
Kid went very, very still.  "Low blow, Meitantei."  
  
_Shite_.  
  
Slowly, Kid stood.  "What exactly did you want to know about it, hm?"  Shite shite shite _shite_.  How narrow was the line between benevolent and malevolent ghosts?  How easy was it to cross?  "How I wasn't even on the job?  Perhaps how confusing it was?  How badly it hurt?"  Saguru flinched.  He knew far too much about what murderers could do to a body-- to a person-- how long they could drag it out.  "It _didn't_ ," Kid hissed as he leaned in, glow intensifying and flesh melting into glassy light over bone.  "It might've been better if it had.  More _normal_.  But no, he _downloaded my mind_ and _threw the rest away_ ," he screamed out of his skull, both eyes burning red.  _"I kicked his ghost across the Sanzu myself and I-_ -" and it was like someone had shut a window in the ghost's heart, the sudden storm locked away once more.  "... I laughed."  Kid straightened, folding himself away until he seemed just an extraordinary gentleman in white, with perhaps a bit too bright a blue in the irises of his eyes.  "I'm not proud of that part."  
  
Saguru could barely breathe.  Kid certainly wasn't.  He simply stood, clamping on rage in a way that would've left the living seething, gasping for air.  
  
"... I'm sorry," Saguru whispered.  
  
"So am I, Meitantei."  And Kid vanished, leaving nothing but a thin film of slime on the window in his wake.  
  
Saguru sat there, staring blindly at the discarded cards for far too long, his mind making connections he really didn't want to make.  
  
The _robot_.  
  
Kid had been alive for the first three heists of his reappearance.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
To: physquerin@ghostbusters.net  
From: hsaguru@hakubalabs.net  
Subject: Alignment flip?  
  
  
Drs. Gilbert and associates,  
  
Is it possible for a Class Four (or any ghost, I suppose) to move from benevolent to malevolent, or vice versa?  If so, how difficult might this be and what sort of permanence or duration of the change would be expected?  
  
No one is in danger, it's only that I may have inadvertently offended the benevolent Class Four of my ongoing case.  He didn't harm me when he yelled at me, though.  
  
\- Hakuba, Saguru  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
To: hsaguru@hakubalabs.net  
From: physquerin@ghostbusters.net  
Subject: re: Alignment flip?  
  
  
Mr. Hakuba -  
  
If he didn't harm you when he was furious at you, he hasn't changed his level of malevolence at all.  Ghosts are capable of a range of emotions directly proportional to how much they've retained of their sense of self.  
  
Sincerely,  
  
Dr. Erin Gilbert  
Conductors of Metaphysical Examination  
110 North Moore St.  
TriBeCa, New York City, NY 10112  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
Kid really had revealed far more than he wanted to, and probably far more than he suspected he had, with his snap of temper.  Saguru input the new parameters into his Hakuba Labs supercomputer -- engineering, robotics, software, possible neurology, male age 25+, Japan, DOD January 14th, 2015 -- and it spit out one Professor Ogami, late of Ogami Electrics Laboratory in Ekoda, who'd been mauled quite horribly in his clean room.  
  
So.  That was Kid's murderer.  
  
He'd been a spindly man, going by his ID, and from the various dollys and handcarts and the size of the boxes in crime scene photos of his garage-turned-shipping dock, not a particularly strong one.  He had almost no associates outside the internet and the occasional robotics conference downtown, and quite frankly couldn't have lured Kid to his home nor carried him particularly far.  
  
Saguru had the computer appropriate and queue up footage from every convenience store security camera in a three-block radius, at least those that were digital and still in caches after this long, and ran facial recognition software alongside the playback.  
  
It took just fourteen minutes and six seconds before the computer dinged.  The video was frozen, a facial recognition lattice outlining one man's head in hacker-green.  He had on a knit cap and puffy navy blue coat, and was helping up a --  
  
\-- a teenager in a high school uniform?  The same basic black gakuren that half the schools in Japan still used, the same kind Saguru had in his own closet in fact.  No, this was just Ogami on his way to get a bento or something, or grab Kaitou Kid without even knowing who--  
  
Why would Ogami pass up a kid who'd too conveniently just passed out right at his feet?  Why would he be kind enough to help the teen up off the freezing sidewalk?  Why was he pulling the kid's arm over his shoulders and making placating gestures at the scarce bystanders in earshot?  
  
But Kid was nearly forty.  He-- he-- he...  
  
... there was no evidence that Saguru's Kid was the same man who'd disappeared ten years ago.  
  
The teenager's head lolled back, and the camera got a perfect face shot of Kuroba Kaito.  
  
No.  
  
_No_.  
  
"No," Saguru croaked, and suddenly reality hit.  That _was_ Kuroba Kaito on the screen, that _was_ Ogami kidnapping him right off the street in broad daylight, and that _was_ the last anyone would ever see Kaito alive.  
  
Kaitou Kid could pass for human in uniform.  Why _not_ out of it?  Why _not_ all the time?  
  
Kaito's father had died ten years ago, just days after Kid's final heist.  His father.  His _father_ , one of the greatest magicians of all time, someone who'd matched Saguru's profile except for dying at the start of Kid's hiatus instead of the end of it.  
  
Kuroba Kaito was _dead_ and no one ever even knew he was _missing_.  
  
Saguru swallowed back bile.  This was... this was obscene, how could no one notice, how-- how-- even Kaito's mother, she didn't notice, how couldn't she, HOW DARE SHE NOT NOTICE how dare she not... not even be around, not have anyone come to check on him, how could Kuroba Kaito be so alone no one realized he was dead?  
  
How could it take twenty-one months for anyone to realize he'd been murdered?  
  
How?  
  
"Cold hands, warm heart, right?" Kaito had asked, roping him into a poker game just a week after Saguru had outed Kid.  Kaito had been checking to see if Saguru would let anything slip.  Or maybe if he would realize.  
  
How had he not realized?  
  
Tears soaking into his collar, Saguru took one shuddering breath, put his head down, and wept.  
  
It was very late when Saguru ran out of tears.  His head throbbed (dehydration, he deserved it, how could he not notice) and his collar and foresleeves were cold and sticky-wet (he deserved that too), and god knew what his face looked like.  He really should've gone to bed (he didn't deserve to), but instead his feet took him down to the door, and he dazedly toed into his shoes and pulled on a jacket, and headed out into the night.  
  
For a long while he just drifted, vaguely aware of obeying traffic signals and crossing bridges, of cars cruising by in white-thrumming-red, of the electronic cacophony and blaring lights of arcades... and in the end, that was what got through the fog.  Saguru found himself blinking back to himself in a streetful of nightlife, which suddenly crashed over him in a nails-on-the-blackboard cacophony.  Neon and lights and laughter and noise and noise and _noise_.  
  
And one dark spot.  
  
Saguru fled up the stairs of the temple, through the quiet open (too open) plaza surrounded by shrine buildings, and into the forested back gardens.  The city was shut out behind the trees, the air filled with the scent of fresh pine and water instead of car exhaust and beer and _people_ , people who didn't know about Kaito, didn't know about Kid, didn't know... didn't know...  
  
There was a small shrine, little more than a shelf under a pitched roof, tucked away between the trees.  A slab of rock serving as a prayer step still showed signs of being newly-placed in the dirt around it, and there was only a bucket of water tucked out of the line of traffic to cleanse with.  
  
Saguru ladled out water to rinse his shaking hands and mouth properly, then couldn't let the ladle go.  "I didn't know," he told the shadowed figurine inside.  Its little hands seemed to catch and gather the words safely away.  "No one knew, and he's..."  His throat closed up again.  
  
He died and no one knew.  
  
He died and no one noticed.  
  
He died and... and...  
  
A light footstep, almost inaudible, on dirt.  "Hakuba-san?"  
  
Saguru knew that voice.  What on earth was it doing here?  He turned to see a too-familiar, too-small figure, glasses glinting faintly in the dark.  "Edogawa-kun?"  He blinked, wet lashes sticking together coldly.  "It's nearly," he didn't have his watch for anything precise, "two in the morning, what are you doing out?"  
  
"... I went for a walk," the boy replied slowly, as if only vaguely starting to remember that children shouldn't even be awake at this hour, much less wandering the streets.  "What's wrong?"  
  
_Everything_.  "I found..."  Edogawa wouldn't even believe him.  But it wasn't as though the boy had a high opinion of him anyway.  Exhibit: Hattori.  Why not be considered mad?  It'd certainly be better than Kid's most dangerous adversary believing the truth.  "I found the ghost of a murder victim, whose killer is dead and whose death was never noticed.  And he doesn't want any of it known."  
  
Edogawa stared at him.  Then, "... New York did a number on us all, huh."  
  
Shite.  "You can't actually _believe_ me?"  
  
"'When you have eliminated the impossible...'" Edogawa quoted, then shrugged.  "I've been interrogating my parents' New York friends for over a month.  They wouldn't _all_ pull a hoax on me like that."  He stepped up to Saguru's side, gaze on the shrine, thoughtful.  
  
"Sometimes," Edogawa murmured, eyes too old, too wise, "sometimes... you just can't do anything.  The hardest part of that, for people like us, is accepting that you don't need to.  Even if it's not a good situation... sometimes they just aren't.  You know?"  
  
"But he died and no one--" knew.  or noticed. or, "--cared."  
  
" _You_ care," Edogawa corrected him sharply.  
  
Saguru's eyes snapped to the boy.  He... Edogawa was right, as he so often was.  _He_ cared.  He'd bothered to look, to deduce, and he'd found what was there.  
  
And Edogawa was right again, that it was difficult for people like them to accept that there was just nothing they could do.  
  
Yet.  
  
  
-0-0-0-  
  
  
One updated will.  One sheaf of printouts, pictures plus GPS coordinates, carefully archived on acid-free paper.  One safety deposit box, in the bank of a village high on an alpine plain.  One key.  
  
One loop of fairy lights, out on the balcony.  
  
One striking shadow, slipping from solid darkness to a misty glow as he stepped into Saguru's room, as if walking through a curtain and into a spotlight.  
  
"Meitantei."  
  
Saguru set his book aside and stood, heart in his throat.   "Kid.  Welcome back."  
  
Kid smiled politely.  "I wanted to apologize for my outburst at our last meeting.  I have for a while, truly, though I thought I'd wait until I was sure of my invitation once more."  
  
"I need to apologize too," Saguru admitted.  He stepped up close, reached out, and lifted Kid's hand.  The bank key, he took from his vest pocket.  "This is yours," he said, enfolding the key into Kid's softly-glowing glove.  Unable to meet Kid's eye, he continued, "I couldn't let it go.  But I can't betray your secrets.  This... I did the calculations, and put all my evidence away in a lockbox up in Fujikawaguchiko.  The address and bank name is in my will, just in case."  Kid's fist was so cold, and gave just a little too easily in his grip to be convincing as flesh.  "If and when you want your body found and laid to rest, you should be able to find it."  
  
"... Hakuba..." Kid whispered, stunned.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Kuroba-kun."  
  
That cold touch brushed gently over Saguru's cheek, making him glance up in surprise.  "For what?" Kid asked.  
  
_Because you died, Kaito, you died and it took nearly two years for anyone to notice._ "For meddling," Saguru said instead.  "And because this is all I can do."  
  
"Meitantei... Saguru," Kid corrected himself.  "You've done more than you could possibly know."  
  
When he kissed Saguru, it felt like a drink of cold water on a sunny day.

**Author's Note:**

> To explain the tags: Eko (Ekokami) is a thing I came up with in chat with some friends. It started as a joke about a new religion forming among everybody Conan helped get arrested, and spun out through me discovering the kana abbreviation for "What Would Edogawa Conan Do?" (WWJD only for Conan) would translate as "Eko saves" (or something very close, I don't quite remember what the exact verb was), and then it was a short step to prison anthropologists going to a conference and the question going around for everyone is "Who the heck is Eko?". After that there was it getting to a police rumor, and then there was settling a bet in Division One, and long story short Conan got deified quite against his will and is very embarrassed about it.
> 
> Saguru happened to end up at the new main Eko shrine, because Eko is a little god of justice that -- unlike every other one I could find -- is about protecting people instead of a social institution. For the purposes of this fic, Conan's been around so much death and laid so many souls to rest that he's developing a PKE charge, so Eko is actually becoming a thing and he'll deify in full when he dies.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the valiant never taste of death but once](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9902009) by [bookoftheazuresky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky)




End file.
